Discussions on Preventing Guild Hopping

[waylander]

I do enjoy reading WoW Insider even though I don't play much WoW these days. This week's highlights included some discussions on a sister site (massively.com) about guild hopping.

Original Source Article

It relates to the issue of games requiring organized groups to progress far into the end/elder game, and then ditching a guild in favor of another one with higher progression ratings once they've gotten all their loot from the current guild.  After a game is established, many guilds put level, class, and gear pre-requisites on applications because they don't want to retrain/regear newbies all the time.

So somewhere along the food chain some guild gets used, abandoned, and upset over all the hard work they put in to get someone geared just to see them leave on a moment's notice.

So anyway, the article sorta comes up with this idea that you stick everything on a vendor for purchase. Then when people do raids everyone gets a set amount of badges or tokens that can be used towards purchasing gear. I have to admit that something like that would cut down on the drama and bitterness that goes on when you lose someone you spent a lot of time gearing up, but on the flip side this would sort of make raids pretty boring.

What do you guys think? If everything was a badge or token drop, what else could be put into a raid encounter to make it feel worthwhile? Or is the idea just shitty, and WoW's model should be the norm?

[Valmorian]

So anyway, the article sorta comes up with this idea that you stick everything on a vendor for purchase.

You mean like Badges of Justice?  As far as I know, what you describe IS how the high end WoW game works.

[waylander]

Yeah you can buy some gear that in the ballpark to what you can get on a high end raid now with badges, but there's some good stuff you can only get from a raid drop. I think this guy was recommending to put all loot on the badge vendors though, or recommending that future games do something like that.

[Venkman]

Guild Ranks with meaningful rewards.
Guild Housing
Guild v Guild fighting.

None of these are new... except apparently to Blizzard. However, I don't expect them in WoW anytime soon either. They need to think there's a problem and I'm not sure they ever will.

And I say this as someone who's guild has been used as the stepping stone.

[Gobbeldygook]

What do you guys think? If everything was a badge or token drop, what else could be put into a raid encounter to make it feel worthwhile? Or is the idea just shitty, and WoW's model should be the norm?

WoW's already experimenting with some half-way systems in Sunwell.

For those that haven't been keeping up, something called 'sun motes' drops in Sunwell Plateau.  They're the Generic Raid Crafting Mat of Sunwell.  However, you can also take certain pieces of gear and a sunmote and go trade it in at a vendor for a different piece of gear.  One example is a piece of balance druid gear that you can trade in for a piece of resto druid gear.  If you happen to have a boomkin in your raid, great, he just got a well-itemized piece of gear.  If you don't(You don't.), no sweat, just give it to a resto druid and he can turn it into a piece of gear he can use.  It's still random, but it's not randomness that sucks(Like that inexplicable +holy damage trash cloak in kara).

Purely tokenized systems like what he proposes have objective downsides.  Right now, a guild can drag a gimp along in their raid(For example, an alt of the main tank that ran out of upgrades weeks ago) and shower him with epics that no-one else wants and very quickly get them up to spec.  But if he has to grind the instance for 3 weeks to get one piece of gear, that's going to seem a lot less appealing to everyone involved.

[tmp]

If i were a cruel korean developer, i'd "solve" it by adding guild requirement on the gear. That is, the stuff looted while being member of certain guild could only be equipped while remaining member of said guild.

Of course, this would be just stepping stone to alternative RMT gear source, free of such limitation. Or maybe grindy quest to 'free' your gear. Or both.

[Threash]

Why would you even want to limit it in the first place? If you get a piece of gear its because you raided for it and you earned, why should you be beholden to the guild that you raided with?

[tmp]

Why would you even want to limit it in the first place? If you get a piece of gear its because you raided for it and you earned, why should you be beholden to the guild that you raided with?

Because the supposed problem is people "using" guilds to raid for personal gear and then moving to pastures new. So that "solution" removes this very incentive to join guild in the first place, as ditching them would also mean loss of that part of advancement they made possible.

Of course, it should've also be written in green but that's another story 

[photek]

Solution to prevent guild hopping : Don't suck.

[Nebu]

Solution to prevent guild hopping : Don't suck be an asshole to other people.

Better.

[photek]

Solution to prevent guild hopping : Don't suck be an asshole to other people.

Better.

It really has nothing to do with being an asshole, it's more a matter of fact that the guild with phattest lootz will attract the best epichungry ones who aren't a part of cosa nostra. There are two types of guild members, those who will leave after wiping on Four Horsemen for two months and those who won't. Those who leave aren't worth shit anyway, a few epics drawback (except from MT) aren't anything so what can be done except keep moving forward ? Guild BoP sounds like those crazy husbands / boyfriends you hear about, who give wifes tons of gifts, but after failing at marriage due to being a nimrod and wife leaves, he wants his stuff back. Also viewing from another side, if a player has raided with the guild actively and looted tons of epics and went to greener pastures, didn't he deserve those ?

In the end only way to prevent guild hopping is to, instead of me saying stop sucking, is being a better guild at what you do.. From my years in MMOs there will always be guild hoppers and these are unavoidable and there ain't any mechanics that can be implemented to benefit the guild versus these guys.

EDIT : Oh yeah, there kinda is, someone already mentioned good guidelines :

Guild Ranks with meaningful rewards.
Guild Housing
Guild v Guild fighting.

[tmp]

Better.

But it's intrawebs. That's like going to congress and telling people there to stop being dicks.

[Nebu]

The best way to prevent guild hopping is to fill your guild with solid, equitable players.   As soon as someone becomes a power hungry jerk or jealousy rears its ugly head, guilds die.  

If I wanted to be witty, I'd say the best way to prevent guild hopping would be to remove loot.  Loot seems to be the biggest reason people leave guilds.  Either it's a fight over loot, lack of groups to obtain loot, or poor quality groups unable to get loot.

[photek]

The best way to prevent guild hopping is to fill your guild with solid, equitable players.   As soon as someone becomes a power hungry jerk or jealousy rears its ugly head, guilds die.   

Exactly. However avoiding the nimrods is impossible. Pre-TBC while raiding Naxx to get world firsts (I play on EU realms), I remember several guilds disbanding and reforming due to this. MTs lost, healers bounced, group of friends went to the guild who were two bosses ahead, shit like this is a part of any MMO and don't think it is preventable in an other manner than longterm bonds and guildmembers who go years back. MMORPG really means MMODrama when it comes to guilds.

[Tebonas]

I always said good riddance to the guild hoppers. If they hop guilds they were jerks anyway and now they are at least somebody elses problem!

[Lightstalker]

Guilds on the cusp of the next largest raid size/progression level usually end up in the feeder role.  They need to recruit unreliable_nobody_035 to fill out their raid and have a chance at epics, but then when unreliable_nobody_035 gets his drop and qualifies to apply to Guild_With_More_Guys_And_Greater_Progression_003 and jumps ship the rest of the people in Feeder_Guild_01 feel just a little more bitter about their lot in WoW and get all angsty.  If you've got 8 guys who know what they are doing you can raid 25 man instances, but only if you've got 17 other guys who can not stand in fire and soak damage while your core gets the work done (Ablative Raiding).  Guilds in this situation can easily fall into a feeder state because that's the way the game is designed.  It is easier to be ablative and pick up your phat loots than it is to be in the core carrying the rest of the raid (in an ideal world everyone is core, but people/classes aren't built like that).  So the guy who is along for the ride gets more epics per unit pain, and has no qualms about jumping to the next new thing because he didn't actually work very hard for the guild he's a part of now.  No buy in and no loyalty in the current situation and a greener pasture up ahead; jumping guilds is a no brainer.  Those of us who do not jump are just doing it wrong.

I like solutions where the Guild levels up and the Guild pays some opportunity cost to add a member.  Right now the only drawback for adding members in most games is the risk of additional drama, if you are already accepting anyone who happens to have today's shiny list of epics you probably aren't concerned about (additional) drama overmuch and there is no incentive to have anything but all the people you possibly can.  If it were a GvG game and Guilds were matched up based on the size of their rosters then you'd see guilds turning down competent applicants which would put pressure on all the floaters.




I love the token drops and think everything should go that way.  Even the Tier drops with 3 classes on them were frequently crap for all three classes.  Who needs 3 pairs of tier gloves with different enchants anyway, or to kill Gruul 300 times so everyone can get their DST?  I just don't think being a slave to the rng is a great way to game.  Tokens alleviate some loot distribution drama, which is a good thing, but it also makes guild hopping even easier to do since the floater hasn't taken many 'rare' resources from the guild and will feel even less guilt (I got the drop, but they all got tokens!).

[amiable]

Wouldn't the obvious solution just be to remove the retarded-ass grind requiring you to run the same content scores of time before you move on to the next set of content? 

Seriously, I only join friends and family guilds now precisely for this reason (or BAT guilds, which tend to be pleasantly drama free).

[tazelbain]

This cockblock is blocking my cock!  We need solutions now!

[tmp]

Wouldn't the obvious solution just be to remove the retarded-ass grind requiring you to run the same content scores of time before you move on to the next set of content? 

Yeah but then when you have people able to complete and loot dry any set of content in under a week, they're instead bitching the next sets of content just ain't coming fast enough to keep them interested.

[Nebu]

Yeah but then when you have people able to complete and loot dry any set of content in under a week, they're instead bitching the next sets of content just ain't coming fast enough to keep them interested.

I'm willing to bet that once a game waves *goodbye* to the hardcore, that their gains in casuals will offset the losses.  Though I guess a subset of harcore players always at the cap has some purpose as a marketing tool.  i.e. "Look at the neat stuff we have and you don't" 

[Ragnoros]

Wouldn't the obvious solution just be to remove the retarded-ass grind requiring you to run the same content scores of time before you move on to the next set of content? 

That.

Instead of trying to fix the symptom, (guild hopping) fix the root problem.

[tmp]

I'm willing to bet that once a game waves *goodbye* to the hardcore, that their gains in casuals will offset the losses.

When i said being able to complete set of content in under a week, i was thinking of casual players. Catasses would likely burn through it in under 24-48 hours once the current RNG loot cockblocks and such are removed.

Example could be the latest LotRO update. Took them well over a month to deliver, took the players about week-two to get bored off. And that's probably one of the most casual friendly games (and casual player base) with one of fastest update rates on the block.

[Nebu]

The fundamental problem with these games is that linear content takes a long time to develop.  Tool-based sandbox games seem like a better alternative for removing the grind, but those haven't demonstrated anywhere near the success of more scripted, linear games.  For me, DAoC was a nice middle ground.  You could create your own content in RvR by varying the type of play each and every evening (solo, small group, 8v8, castle seiges, and relic takes) but even that gets old after a while. 

[Slayerik]

I find a "Employment History" like Eve has at least deters it a little. You are taking responsibility the minute you join.

[Wershlak]

Don't recruit jerks to your guild and they won't cause drama and/or leave.

Guilds who recruit people based on their race/class/gear level to fill a raid slot without a thought about the person behind the keyboard get what they deserve when that person leaves.

If you are pissed that someone left your guild because it means you are now that much further from your full set of epic raid gear, then guess who the lootwhore is.

This whole thing is a human issue not a technology or game design issue.

[eldaec]

Why would you want to stop someone hopping out of your guild if they don't want to be there?

The problems here are....

1) That you are playing a game where the process of grinding is not fun to you. You need to stop that.

2) You are performing unfun activity for other people who do not want to be in your guild in the first place. This doesn't stop being a problem just because they are trapped in your guild afterwards.

3) You're inviting people who don't want to be in your guild. This is the biggest problem of all. Guild leading is a player-skill activity, guild recruiting is another. I know when I've led guilds back in the day, I was shit at recruiting, so I just worked out who wasn't shit at it and got them to handle it.

Anyway, employment history is a good solution. But it didn't happen in WoW, so I don't expect to see it anywhere else anytime soon.

[Lightstalker]

Don't recruit jerks to your guild and they won't cause drama and/or leave.

Guilds who recruit people based on their race/class/gear level to fill a raid slot without a thought about the person behind the keyboard get what they deserve when that person leaves.

If you are pissed that someone left your guild because it means you are now that much further from your full set of epic raid gear, then guess who the lootwhore is.

This whole thing is a human issue not a technology or game design issue.

Of course it is a social issue.

What drives the social interaction in the first place?  What tool limitations exist?  What in game motivations are provided to the social units (guilds) that exist in the game?  Yes, people are broken, but that doesn't mean the game design doesn't also have something to answer for.

Players can coast and pick up loot, then coast along into some other guild and pick up more loot.  All it takes is a lack of pride and unwillingness to lay down roots and you can squirm you way into any guild, pick up your shinny, and then repeat the operation elsewhere.  When game design requires a minimum raiding roster to experience content but provides no incentive to dance with the one who brought ya we're back to selfishly shafting our neighbors until we get bored and try the same thing in another game.

WoW, for instance, requires (or rewards strongly) certain classes/talent/and gear loadouts and punishes duplication of others (how many Doomkin does a raid really need?).  At some point the player isn't as important as what he's playing - but the game puts impediments on getting your good people into useful characters (why don't we have a spec swap?  Why don't we have a /level once we've already done the whole level to N thing?  Why is gear >> everything else once a minimum competence is attained?).

Not recruiting jerks into your guild is a great way to end up running 5 man raids once a week.  Attrition happens.  Guilds, like games, must bring new players into their ranks and most of the available (relevant) players on any server are the floater-jerks hopping from one guild to another.  Guilds that want to progress are incentivised to pick up players they probably shouldn't, because without them they cannot reach the rewards in front of them.   To combat attrition Guilds take risks on new guys, to reach new content they take risks on new guys.  New Guys aren't risking anything more than a raid lockout timer when they sign on with a guild, however, they can (and do) just bail without looking back.

This really wasn't any different in Shadowbane either.  When a guild lost their city they quit the game (losing a city was often a Drama-Inspired event in and of itself).  Guilds that didn't recruit new blood died-out through attrition, guilds that did risked more drama and city loss (which was actually encouraged via the game design).  The end of every design path was a guild leaving the game, as the path in WoW is to jump through progressively progressed feeder guilds until you get to the endgame raiding you desire.

Issues:
  Concurrency.  Players need to be on-line together to accomplish their objectives.
  Loyalty.  There is no reward for loyalty aside from that created within any subset of the player culture.
  Identity.  Anonymity on the interwebs and the ease to circumvent In Game controls and information flow / socially game other players.
  Manpower.  Pieces of the game world require N players to gain entry to the fun (doesn't matter that the fun is just like all the other fun elsewhere in the world). 
  etc.

Combine Concurrency and Manpower and you've got to manage a wait-list (Drama ahoy) in order to ensure that the players who do happen to log in today can have fun by going on the rides instead of waiting in line for the last guy to show up.  The extras still need something to do so they stay around on-line, in case one of those on the ride have to leave or disconnect or need to be replaced for performance issues.  It isn't a trivial problem (sure it isn't rocket surgery either) but there are frequently no tools built into the game design to help alleviate any of this.  That points to design deficiency, in that the successful enjoyment of your game is predicated on 3rd party tools, effort, and good will.  Why put the long term success of your enterprise in the hands of outsiders?

[Tale]

Guild hopping doesn't seem to affect my guild, because we have a reputation for being ruthlessly well-led and organised, requiring commitment, with great success in a few games (EQ1, DAoC and currently EQ2). In other games our branches have failed, but the ones that worked brought us a solid reputation. Former players return to us in new games, bringing friends or people who have heard of us. When we fail, it's because people leave the game (SWG, WoW), not because they went to another guild. Our message board, which has been going since 2002, has become a community in itself (not on the FoH scale, just our own community).

I think we try to avoid mass incoming guild hopping, because it has caused culture clashes. Recruitment is usually kept closed, which actually means we'll accept a trickle of incoming players (usually people we know).

Our time zone probably helps: GMT+10 (east coast Australia). We are mostly Australians, New Zealanders, a few from Japan, Hong Kong, Guam, etc. And some North American shift workers. In EQ1 we did get the occasional person who left to join a North American uberguild, but it was really frowned on. Our progress was behind those guilds, but we offered the same path in a more playable time zone.

So I think to prevent guild hopping, you need a target recruiting pool who will have something in common, set up some clear goals to work towards, and deliver. Then you have a brand.

[IainC]

Is this a discussion on how to stop people from guild hopping in WoW, is it a discussion on creating binding community systems in future games or is it a cry for help from a frustrated guildleader who wants to keep his players in random_current_MMO_#3?

I don't have anything to say about the first as I have never played WoW. For the third, the basics have been covered already: invite solid people, have a resonably stringent recruitment process that will at least flag up and at best weed out potential drama and make the guild a fun and rewarding place to be.

For the second, then I'd suggest the following:
Give anyone who joins a guild a way to contribute effectively no matter what they like to do.
Don't split your game up into arbitrarily sized lumps of content (large fixed size raids) that necessarily create insular and hierarchical social systems.
Make all your content accessible by anybody, no matter how casual. Sure the hardcore will get there first but the guys who play <10 hours a week are paying the same monthly sub and they might like to see it eventually too.
Don't encourage players to be dicks. Enough of them can manage it without dev help, there's no reason to turn the waverers into flap-scrobblers as well.

[Merusk]

I find a "Employment History" like Eve has at least deters it a little. You are taking responsibility the minute you join.

This would, in fact, be a fantastic tool in ALL games.   EQ on Tribunal had something like this based on player logs.  It was a website you could go to, type in a player's name and POOF there's their guild history. You could tell a guild hopper right away and avoid them.  It died with the implementation of the "pay to change your characters name/ server" revenue stream, though. 

Hell, even today there's known "guild hoppers" on my WoW server who can't get into 'decent' guilds.  People like to say WoW doesn't have a server social structure, but it does.  It's just large enough that you can get lost a lot more easily than you could in the old games.

Devs by and large don't pay attention to these social structures, though. Guilds are seen as an afterthought to be dealt with as just another chat channel.  Kind of sad.

[Lightstalker]

For the second, then I'd suggest the following:
Give anyone who joins a guild a way to contribute effectively no matter what they like to do.
Don't split your game up into arbitrarily sized lumps of content (large fixed size raids) that necessarily create insular and hierarchical social systems.
Make all your content accessible by anybody, no matter how casual. Sure the hardcore will get there first but the guys who play <10 hours a week are paying the same monthly sub and they might like to see it eventually too.
Don't encourage players to be dicks. Enough of them can manage it without dev help, there's no reason to turn the waverers into flap-scrobblers as well.

I don't know that the third one is practical or desireable in a general way.  In Shadowbane some of the content was related to designing and building a city, while some of the other content was related to funding and supporting a city / national economy.  When necessary resources are shared across participants it just doesn't work to let every one put their hand on the rudder.  It is on the guild to provide stability and access to these sorts of resources to the general membership of the guild (as a benifit and reason for remaining with that guild) but in order to do that they must limit access to those particular tools / types of content.  I think some content should only be available to guilds (and then within that class some content only available to guild leadership) in games that practically require guild structures to form (Viva Pinata has no buisiness with guild only content, SB was all about guild only content).  I suppose at this point I'm just clarifying an edge case that your statement never really applied to.

The other three should be no brainers.  I'd add "... and when they like to do it." to the first point just to emphasize the pain concurrency demands place on a guild structure.

I don't think Guildhopping can be stopped in WoW, it is by design behavior. 

[Lietgardis]

The Warcraft Realms census bot records character guild.  It's not great, but it's there.

[Slayerik]

As a former raiding guild leader in WoW, I'll also say that do not accept large mergers. (I believe Tale said this as well). That shit never ends well. Cliques and drama a plenty from there.

Basically, some people say all the right things ... so you aren't 'inviting assholes'. There are always moments when you will see someone's true colors, when you do act then and do not wait.

[waylander]

I like the idea of the Employment history. When we do applications for new games we want to know previous guilds that someone has been with, and then we do a little research on each applicant. But if I could view "Billybob's" application in more detail and see that he'd been in 5 guilds over the past 8 months, then it would certainly help with the screening because its not like the "Billybob;s" are going to tell you that when they apply. Instead you find out when Billybob suddenly /gquits and is running around with some other tag.

There's been some decent responses, and then there's some people that seem to think that guilds sit around with an HR department ready to do a full security background check on each person. Well its not like that, and in most cases you've got to take a chance on someone based on what they said on their forum application.

Fortunately for us our screening weeds out a majority of the tards, but no system is perfect whether its in game or out of game.  Like Tale our guild attracts former members back into the fold when we change games, and our member evaluation weeds out most of the bad apples the first 3 months. When we've had to leave a game it was because we "won" and there was nothing left to prove, or due to poor game design/boredom/etc there was not much of a quality pool left from which we could recruit.

I doubt WoW can do much to change the current system, but I wish it would open up more developer's eyes to the need for better guild screening tools.  People dick off now because they are rarely held accountable on these huge servers, but even something as simple as being able to see someone's past guild affiliations (including join/leave dates) would be invaluable to guild leaderships.  Then maybe players who need guilds would care more about their reputation if they knew that some form of guild history followed them.

[Rasix]

Hah, found a guild hopper on my server that left my current guild to raid higher content.. been in 5 guilds since then.  Funny enough, there's another rogue with a similar path out of our guild and around the staple mid tier guilds before attempting to reapply.

http://www.warcraftrealms.com/charsheet/70395150

70     Four Kings     Apr 20, 08
70    Nerf Me    Apr 17, 08
70    Merciless    Apr 14, 08
70    Nocturnal    Apr 05, 08
70    Village Idiots    Mar 12, 08
70    HellBent    Feb 27, 08
70    Unguilded    Feb 19, 08
70    Merciless    Feb 12, 08
70    Order of Mayhem    Feb 01, 08
70    The Jerk Store    Jan 27, 08
70    Unguilded    Jan 21, 08
70    Progeny    Jan 19, 08
70    Crit Happens    Jan 15, 08
69    Progeny    Jan 12, 08
68    Unguilded    Jan 09, 08
62    Premeditated    Dec 23, 07
60    The Blood Brothers    Dec 19, 07
60    Premeditated    Dec 17, 07

It's interesting to look at that link Liet posted and check out your ex-members.  You see a lot are no longer with the grand opportunities they left for.

Our guild recently had a major upheaval.  We had a friend of a bunch of guildmates form a 25 man raiding guild.  That drew off a large section of our more dedicated raiders, who wanted to be more progress oriented.  A couple people gave bullshit reasons for going, but no one really faulted anyone for leaving for an environment that suited their aspirations better.   Another large section broke off to reform a guild that had merged with the guild I'm in a while back.  During the 3 months or so they were with the guild, they always kept that identity of their former guild in their actions and words.  It was no shock and no blow when they left.  However, they will likely never be welcomed back (their guild leader is a big jerk).

Now we're back to the same content we were when this all started but with a group that's more satisfied, happy, and excited about where they are at.

In any MMO with tiered progress, you're going to have guild hopping. There's no use hard coding against this, it's the job of the guild to attempt to recruit members that fit in with their guild culture.  You can usually spot someone that's just using you a JV training team.   Their focus upon joining isn't going to be fitting in and helping the guild, their focus is going to be where you are at and where you are going and when are the raids.  People jumping off makes your guild strength weaker but your culture stronger (unless it leads to morale problems) and in most cases is preferred to having a malcontent hanging around. It can sting a little, however, knowing you've been used.  I think lower tier and more casual guilds can feel this a little more because their main focus is on helping other guild members and this often takes the form of free mats, gems, and services.  Jumpers take strong advantage of this (have solid guild bank policies).